Academic Freedom
and Educational Responsibility
A STATEMENT
FROM THE
BOARD
OF
DIRECTORS
OF
Association
of American
Colleges and
Universities
1818 R Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009
www.aacu.org
Copyright © 2006 by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Permission to photocopy is granted for
non-commercial use. The following credit line must appear on the first page of every copy: “Reprinted with permission.
Copyright 2006 by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.” For excerpts, the following credit line must
be used: “Excerpted with permission from Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility. Copyright 2006 by the
Association of American Colleges and Universities.”
ISBN 0-9763576-9-0
Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility is available for download (in PDF format) from www.aacu.org.
Printed copies are available for purchase from AAC&U; discounted rates are available for bulk orders of ten copies or
more. For additional information or to place an order, visit www.aacu.org, e-mail pub_desk@aacu.org, or call
202.387.3760.
Contents
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Intellectual Diversity and the Indispensable Role of Liberal Education .
What Is Not Required in the Name of Intellectual Diversity . . . . . . . .
Academic Freedom and Scholarly Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Intellectual Diversity and the Development of Judgment . . . . . . . . . . . .
Teaching Students to Form Their Own Judgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Ideal Versus the Real . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility was approved by the 2005 Board of Directors of
the Association of American Colleges and Universities:
Chair
Ronald A. Crutcher
President, Wheaton College
Past Chair
Elisabeth A. Zinser
President, Southern Oregon University
Vice Chair
Robert A. Corrigan
President, San Francisco State University
Treasurer
R. Stanton Hales
President, The College of Wooster
President of AAC&U
Carol Geary Schneider
Bobby Fong
President, Butler University
Kati Haycock
Director, The Education Trust
Richard H. Hersh
Senior Fellow, Council for Aid to Education
Shirley S. Kenny
President, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Elaine P. Maimon
Chancellor, University of Alaska Anchorage
Gary Orfield
Professor of Education and Social Policy, Harvard
University
Ex Officio/Chair, ACAD
Virginia M. Coombs
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
University of Wisconsin – River Falls
Eduardo J. Padron
District President, Miami Dade College
Sharon Stephens Brehm
Senior Advisor to the President, Indiana University
Arnold Rampersad
Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities, Stanford
University
Anthony Carnevale
Senior Fellow, National Center on Education and the
Economy
Christopher C. Dahl
President, State University of New York College at
Geneseo
John J. DeGioia
President, Georgetown University
Rosemary DePaolo
Chancellor, University of North Carolina at
Wilmington
Thomas L. “Les” Purce
President, The Evergreen State College
Jamienne S. Studley
President, Public Advocates, Inc.
Daniel F. Sullivan
President, St. Lawrence University
Beverly Daniel Tatum
President, Spelman College
Carolyn G. Williams
President, City University of New York Bronx
Community College
Preface
On behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), we are pleased to
present Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility. This statement, framed and approved by
AAC&U’s board of directors, is designed to provide the larger context missing from current public
debates about intellectual diversity in undergraduate education. It addresses many of the myths and
misrepresentations that have been perpetuated through the insistent external campaign to encourage political oversight of teaching and learning practices on college and university campuses. In particular, the statement clarifies the vital role of diverse perspectives in helping students develop their
own knowledge and intellectual capacities.
Self-appointed political critics of the academy have presented equal representation for conservative
and progressive points of views as the key to quality. But the college classroom is not a talk show.
Rather, it is a dedicated context in which students and teachers seriously engage difficult and contested questions with the goal of reaching beyond differing viewpoints to a critical evaluation of the
relative claims of different positions. Central to the educational aims and spirit of academic freedom, diversity of perspectives is a means to an end in higher education, not an end in itself.
Including diversity is a step in the larger quest for new understanding and insight. But an overemphasis on diversity of perspectives as an end in itself threatens to distort the larger responsibilities
of intellectual work in the academy.
In publishing Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility, we invite college and university
leaders to use it actively to inform public and campus discussions about the academy’s role in both
exploring the contentious issues of our time and providing contexts for civil dialogue and constructive
inquiry. This statement can be used to good effect in any number of contexts, including discussions—
with trustees and regents, with faculty and departments, with administrators and staff, and especially
with students—about the educational principles at stake in the academic freedom debate.
Robert A. Corrigan
Chair of the Board of Directors
Carol Geary Schneider
President
iii
Acknowledgments
The Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities extends its warm
thanks to Dr. Jerry Gaff, senior scholar at AAC&U, for his work in bringing this statement from
concept to completion. The board further thanks the many colleagues from member colleges and
universities and from sister organizations who responded to earlier drafts.
In framing this statement, the board has drawn on concepts that were first articulated in the
1991 publication The Challenge of Connecting Learning, which was crafted by members of the
national advisory committee for an Association of American Colleges (now AAC&U) initiative on
liberal learning and “study-in-depth.”
Challenge was written by Jonathan Z. Smith, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Professor of
the Humanities at the University of Chicago. The board thanks Professor Smith and the other members of the national advisory committee for their leadership and vision. AAC&U’s work on study-indepth was supported by generous grants from the Ford Foundation and the U. S. Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education.
The board also acknowledges AAC&U’s signal debt to William S. Perry Jr. of Harvard University,
whose landmark work on the study of students’ intellectual and ethical development in the college
years helped illuminate the importance of these issues for a generation of faculty members, student
affairs leaders, and researchers on student learning. The board thanks Dr. Lee Knefelkamp, professor
of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and senior scholar at
AAC&U, for her assistance in shaping this statement and for her leadership in making students’
intellectual and ethical development a core theme in AAC&U’s work on the aims and outcomes of
student learning in college.
Finally, the board thanks David Tritelli, AAC&U’s senior academic editor, and Darbi Bossman,
AAC&U’s print production manager and graphic designer, for their expert assistance in bringing
the statement to publication.
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Association of American Colleges and Universities
Academic Freedom and
Educational Responsibility
Academic freedom and responsibility have long been topics for public concern and debate. Academic
freedom to explore significant and controversial questions is an essential precondition to fulfill the
academy’s mission of educating students and advancing knowledge. Academic responsibility requires
professors to submit their knowledge and claims to rigorous and public review by peers who are
experts in the subject matter under consideration; to ground their arguments in the best available
evidence; and to work together to foster the education of students. The Association of American
Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), in concert with the American Association of University
Professors, helped establish the principles of academic freedom early in the twentieth century, and
recently AAC&U joined with other associations to reaffirm them.*
Today, new challenges to academic freedom have arisen from both the right and the left. On the
right, conservative activist David Horowitz, founder of Students for Academic Freedom, has fashioned an “academic bill of rights” that is being considered in several states ostensibly as a means of
protecting “conservative” students from alleged indoctrination by the purportedly “liberal” views of
faculty. This bill inappropriately invites political oversight of scholarly and educational work. On the
left, anti-war protests by students have interrupted speeches by proponents of current national policies. Some protestors have sought to silence—rather than debate—positions with which they do not
agree. These challenges prompt AAC&U to revisit the basic principles involved and to discuss the
role of academic freedom.
There is, however, an additional dimension of academic freedom that was not well developed in
the original principles, and that has to do with the responsibilities of faculty members for educational programs. Faculty are responsible for establishing goals for student learning, for designing and
implementing programs of general education and specialized study that intentionally cultivate the
intended learning, and for assessing students’ achievement. In these matters, faculty must work collaboratively with their colleagues in their departments, schools, and institutions as well as with relevant administrators. Academic freedom is necessary not just so faculty members can conduct their
individual research and teach their own courses, but so they can enable students—through whole college programs of study—to acquire the learning they need to contribute to society.
As faculty carry out this mission, it is inevitable that students will encounter ideas, books,
and people that challenge their preconceived ideas and beliefs. The resulting tension between
* The Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities) began work on this
issue in the early 1920s. Then, through a series of joint conferences begun in 1934, representatives of the American
Association of University Professors and of the Association of American Colleges established the principles set forth in
the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In 2005, the Association of American Colleges and
Universities, along with twenty-eight other higher education organizations, endorsed Academic Rights and Responsibilities,
the American Council on Education’s statement on intellectual diversity on college and university campuses.
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Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility
the faculty’s freedom to teach—individually and collectively—and the students’ freedom to form
independent judgments opens an additional dimension of academic freedom and educational
responsibility that deserves further discussion, both with the public and with students themselves.
The clash of competing ideas is an important catalyst, not only for the expansion of knowledge but
also in students’ development of independent critical judgment. Recognizing this dynamic, many wellintentioned observers underline the importance of “teaching all sides of the debate” in college classrooms. Teaching the debates is important but by no means sufficient. It is also essential that faculty
help students learn—through their college studies—to engage differences of opinion, evaluate evidence,
and form their own grounded judgments about the relative value of competing perspectives. This too
is an essential part of higher education’s role both in advancing knowledge and in sustaining a society
that is free, diverse, and democratic.
Intellectual Diversity and the Indispensable Role of Liberal Education
In any education of quality, students encounter an abundance of intellectual diversity—new knowledge, different perspectives, competing ideas, and alternative claims of truth. This intellectual diversity is experienced by some students as exciting and challenging, while others are confused and overwhelmed by the complexity. Liberal education, the nation’s signature educational tradition, helps students develop the skills of analysis
and critical inquiry with particular
All competing ideas on a subject do not
emphasis on exploring and evaluating competing claims and different
deserve to be included in a course or
perspectives. With its emphasis on
program, or to be regarded as equally
breadth of knowledge and sophisticated habits of mind, liberal educavalid just because they have been asserted.
tion is the best and most powerful
way to build students’ capacities to
form their own judgments about complex or controversial questions. AAC&U believes that all students need and deserve this kind of education, regardless of their academic major or intended career.
Liberal education involves more than the mind. It also involves developing students’ personal
qualities, including a strong sense of responsibility to self and others. Liberally educated students
are curious about new intellectual questions, open to alternative ways of viewing a situation or
problem, disciplined to follow intellectual methods to conclusions, capable of accepting criticism
from others, tolerant of ambiguity, and respectful of others with different views. They understand and accept the imperative of academic honesty. Personal development is a very real part of
intellectual development.
Beyond fostering intellectual and personal development, a liberal education also enables students
to develop meaning and commitments in their lives. In college they can explore different ways to
relate to others, imagine alternative futures, decide on their intended careers, and consider their
larger life’s work of contributing to the common good.
Building such intellectual and personal capacities is the right way to warn students of the inappropriateness and dangers of indoctrination, help them see through the distortions of propaganda,
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Association of American Colleges and Universities
and enable them to assess judiciously the persuasiveness of powerful emotional appeals. Emphasizing
the quality of analysis helps students see why unwelcome views need to be heard rather than
silenced. By thoughtfully engaging diverse perspectives, liberal education leads to greater personal
freedom through greater competence. Ensuring that college students are liberally educated is essential both to a deliberative democracy and to an economy dependent on innovation.
What Is Not Required in the Name of Intellectual Diversity?
There are several misconceptions about intellectual diversity and academic freedom, and we address
some of them here.
1
In an educational community, freedom of speech, or the narrower concept of academic
freedom, does not mean the freedom to say anything that one wants. For example, freedom of speech does not mean that one can say something that causes physical danger to
others. In a learning context, one must both respect those who disagree with oneself
and also maintain an atmosphere of civility. Anything less creates a hostile environment
that limits intellectual diversity and, therefore, the quality of learning.
2
Students do not have a right to remain free from encountering unwelcome or “inconvenient questions,” in the words of Max Weber. Students who accept the literal truth of creation narratives do not have a right to avoid the study of the science of evolution in a
biology course; anti-Semites do not have a right to a history course based on the premise
that the Holocaust did not happen. Students protesting their institution’s sale of clothing
made in sweatshops do not have a right to interrupt the education of others. Students do
have a right to hear and examine diverse opinions, but within the frameworks that knowledgeable scholars—themselves subject to rigorous standards of peer review—have determined to be reliable and accurate. That is, in considering what range of views should be
introduced and considered, the academy is guided by the best knowledge available in the
community of scholars.
3
All competing ideas on a subject do not deserve to be included in a course or program, or to
be regarded as equally valid just because they have been asserted. For example, creationism,
even in its modern guise as “intelligent design,” has no standing among experts in the life
sciences because its claims cannot be tested by scientific methods. However, creationism and
intelligent design might well be studied in a wide range of other disciplinary contexts such as
the history of ideas or the sociology of religion.
4
While the diversity of topics introduced in a particular area of study should illustrate the
existence of debate, it is not realistic to expect that undergraduate students will have the
opportunity to study every dispute relevant to a course or program. The professional judgment of teachers determines the content of courses.
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Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility
Academic Freedom and Scholarly Community
A college or university is a dedicated social place where a variety of competing claims to truth can be
explored and tested, free from political interference. The persons who drive the production of knowledge and the process of education are highly trained professors, and they, through an elaborate process
of review by professional peers, take responsibility as a community for the quality of their scholarship,
teaching, and student learning. Trustees, administrators, policy makers, and other stakeholders also
have important roles to play, but the faculty and their students stand at the center of the enterprise.
The development of a body of knowledge involves scientists or other scholars in developing their
best ideas and then subjecting them to empirical tests and/or searching scholarly criticism.
Knowledge is not simply a matter of making an assertion but of developing the evidence for that
assertion in terms that gain acceptance among those with the necessary training and expertise to
evaluate the scholarly analysis. In order to contribute to knowledge, scholars require the freedom to
pursue their ideas wherever they lead, unconstrained by political, religious, or other dictums. And
scholars need the informed criticism of peers who represent a broad spectrum of insight and experience in order to build a body of knowledge.
One of the great strengths of higher education in the United States is the integration of scholarly
research and educational communities. Students benefit enormously when their learning is guided
by thoughtful and knowledgeable scholars who come from diverse backgrounds and who are trained
to high levels in a variety of disciplines.
A discipline consists of a specialized community that, through intense collective effort, has formulated reliable methods for determining whether any particular claim meets accepted criteria for
truth. But assertions from any single disciplinary community as to “what is the case” are themselves
necessarily partial and bounded, because other disciplinary communities can and do provide different perspectives on the same topics. Economists, for example, see poverty through one set of lenses,
while political scientists and historians contribute different, and sometimes directly competing,
perspectives on the same issue.
Any assertion from a particular individual or a specific intellectual community is necessarily simpler than the complexity it attempts to explain and describe. This is the central reason both scholars
and students must work within a communal setting that involves multiple academic disciplines, and
that fosters an ethos of communication, contestation, and civility. By creating such communities of
inquiry, the academy ensures that no proposal stands without alternatives or arrogates to itself the
claim of possessing the sole truth. The advancement of knowledge requires that intellectual differences
be engaged and explored even as individuals with different points of view are also respected.
Intellectual Diversity and the Development of Judgment
Although one often hears that faculty “impart knowledge” to students, the reality is that, in a good
liberal education, substantial time is devoted to teaching students how to acquire new knowledge for
themselves and how to evaluate evidence within different areas of knowledge. To do this well, professors in the classroom also need academic freedom to explore their subjects—including contested
questions and real-world implications—with their students.
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Association of American Colleges and Universities
To help students think critically about a subject or problem, faculty members need to take seriously
what students already know or believe about that topic and engage that prior understanding so new
learning modifies the old—complicating, correcting, and expanding it. This process of cultivating a
liberal education is a journey that transforms the minds and hearts, and frequently the starting
assumptions, of those involved—both teachers and students. Because knowledge is always expanding,
the eventual destination is uncertain.
To develop their own critical judgment, students also need the freedom to express their ideas
publicly as well as repeated opportunities to explore a wide range of insights and perspectives.
The diversity of the educational community is an important resource to this process; research
shows that students are more likely to develop cognitive complexity when they frequently interact with people, views, and experiences that are different from their own.
Expressing one’s ideas and entertaining divergent perspectives—about race, gender, religion, or cultural values, for example—can be frightening for students. They require a safe environment in order
to feel free to express their own views. They need confidence that they will not be subjected to
ridicule by either students or professors. They have a right to be graded on the intellectual merit of
their arguments, uninfluenced by the personal views of professors. And, of course, they have a right
to appeal if they are not able to reach a satisfactory resolution of differences with a professor.
Learning to form independent judgments further requires
Students cannot be left with the notion that
that students demonstrate openness to the challenges their
there is no legitimate way—
ideas may elicit and the willingbeyond arbitrary choice—to determine the
ness to alter their original views
in light of new knowledge, evirelative value of competing claims.
dence, and perspectives. Just as
a crustacean breaks its confining shell in order to grow, so students may have to jettison narrow concepts as they expand their
knowledge and develop more advanced analytical capacities. As they acquire the capacities to
encounter, grasp, and evaluate diverse points of view, they also gain more nuanced, sophisticated,
and mature understandings of the world. Every college student deserves to experience the intellectual excitement that comes from the capacity to extend the known to the unknown and to
discern previously unsuspected relationships.
Students may, in the end, reaffirm the worldviews and commitments that they brought with them
to college. But they should do so far more aware of the complexity of the issues at stake and far better
able to ground their commitments in analysis, evidence, and careful consideration of alternatives.
Teaching Students to Form Their Own Judgments
Research shows that students tend to develop intellectual and ethical capacities through a series of
predictable stages. Students frequently enter college with a “black and white” view of the world,
see things as either good or bad, and expect their professors and textbooks to serve as definitive
authorities. Part of the job of becoming educated involves breaking out of this dualistic mindset.
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Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility
Students’ growing awareness of intellectual diversity frequently leads to a second cognitive stage
that may be described as naive relativism. Once students see that ideas and methods are contested,
and that their teachers may differ among themselves about interpretations of truth on certain questions, students often decide that “any idea is as good as any other.” While this is a predictable phase
in their intellectual development, it is a phase that their teachers must recognize and challenge.
Students cannot be allowed to be content with the notion that there is no legitimate way—beyond
arbitrary choice—to determine the relative value of competing claims.
Thus it is vital that liberal education be organized to help students progress to a third, more
mature, mental framework in which they form judgments—even in the face of continuing disagreement—about the relative merits of different views, based on careful evaluation of assumptions, arguments, and evidence. One of the central purposes of majoring in a particular discipline or academic field is to come to the understanding that different fields of endeavor provide
well-grounded intellectual criteria for making decisions about alternative claims. Using these criteria, students can learn to discriminate by arguing the evidence, with the understanding that
arguments exist for the purpose of clarifying
ideas, evaluating claims, considering consequences,
A good analysis does not simply
and making choices.
ignore competing perspectives;
In this process, it is important that students
be
asked to assess competing points of view
rather, it takes them thoughtfully
and to address them in making their own arguand carefully into account.
ments. A good analysis does not simply ignore
competing perspectives; rather, it takes them
thoughtfully and carefully into account. Students need to learn, through the kind of extended
and direct experience afforded by study in depth as well as general education courses, to be
able to state why a question or argument is significant and for whom; what the difference is
between developing and justifying a position and merely asserting one; and how to develop
and provide evidence for their own interpretations and judgments.
Accomplishing this kind of educational result cannot be taken for granted or left to students’
unaided musings. There must be curricular space, capable guides and models, and a supportive
institutional culture to encourage students as they learn to develop their own critical judgments. Freedom to learn is indispensable for both students and professors as they examine and
assess disparate points of view within and across disciplinary boundaries. In the best designed
college curricula and assessments, ample opportunity exists for students both to work on these
intellectual skills and to demonstrate to the community their level of achievement in analyzing
complex questions.
Further, this kind of intellectual journey often has the greatest impact on students when they
apply their knowledge and inquiry skills to issues and problems beyond the academy. Students sometimes envision education as being removed from the “real world,” but direct involvement with communities beyond the academy can illustrate the actual power and significance of their learning. In
such community settings, students may encounter new forms of intellectual diversity, forms that
emerge from working with people whose histories, experiences, perspectives, and values may be
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Association of American Colleges and Universities
decidedly different from their own—and also, perhaps, from that of the scholarly community.
Service learning, community-based learning, community action research, internships, study
abroad, and similar experiences all provide opportunities for authentic learning that engage students
in using their critical skills to understand and to better the world.
Those outside the academy readily see the enrichment value of providing students with hands-on
experience in community or organizational settings. However, they must also recognize that realworld learning may involve students with issues and problems that have been highly politicized.
Indeed, some of the same experiences that enhance the knowledge, skills, and motivation of students to become more engaged in civic betterment are precisely the ones that are politically contested. As a result, faculty whose courses include community-based learning experiences often find that
they must help students assess controversial topics that—at first glance—might be thought extraneous
to the subject of the course. When such controversial topics emerge, faculty have to use their
professional judgment in deciding whether to devote class time to them. If they do, they have a
responsibility to ensure that students hear and assess diverse views on these topics.
The Ideal versus the Real
Academic freedom is sometimes confused with autonomy, thought and speech freed from all constraints. But academic freedom implies not just freedom from constraint but also freedom for faculty
and students to work within a scholarly community to develop the intellectual and personal qualities
required of citizens in a vibrant democracy and participants in a vigorous economy. Academic freedom is protected by society so that faculty and students can use that freedom to promote the larger
good.
This document articulates an ideal that is based on historic conceptions of academic freedom
and extends those precepts to include responsibilities for the holistic education of students. In
reality, practice often falls short of these norms. Departments and sometimes whole institutions
do not always establish widely shared goals for student learning, programs may drift away from
original intentions, and assessments may be inadequate. Some departments fail to ensure that
their curricula include the full diversity of legitimate intellectual perspectives appropriate to
their disciplines. And individual faculty members sometimes express their personal views to students in ways that intimidate them. There are institutional means for dealing with these matters,
and in all of these areas, there is room for improvement. The key to improvement is clarity
about the larger purpose of academic freedom and about the educational responsibilities it is
designed to advance.
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About AAC&U
AAC&U is the leading national association concerned with the quality,
vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members
are committed to extending the advantages of a liberal education to all
students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career.
Founded in 1915, AAC&U now comprises more than 1,000 accredited
public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.
AAC&U functions as a catalyst and facilitator, forging links among
presidents, administrators, and faculty members who are engaged in
institutional and curricular planning. Its mission is to reinforce the
collective commitment to liberal education at both the national and
local levels and to help individual institutions keep the quality of student
learning at the core of their work as they evolve to meet new economic
and social challenges.
Information about AAC&U membership, programs, and publications can
be found at www.aacu.org.
1818 R Street NW • Washington, DC 20009 • 202.387.3760 • www.aacu.org